Cheap computing power and the continuing expansion of the World Wide Web are producing some amazing tools for the legal professional. By now, free full-text online searches of opinion and statute databases is routine, and younger attorneys may not even recall the era—way back in the twentieth century—when such information was scarce and expensive.

One of the most useful developments is the emergence of free, instant online translation sites. These sites can translate any text you put in, and you can choose from Spanish, French, German and many other languages. Some go further—at http://translator.go.com, for example, you can simply type in a web address and the service will present that website to you in the language you choose. The few seconds' delay as you move around the site is noticeable but not too annoying.

The translations aren't perfect. As a test I took a section of the Bankruptcy Code (11 USC Sec. 341) that provides for the meeting of creditors and ran it through the free translator. Here's the original (for clarity I removed the section numbers):

Meeting of creditors and equity security holders. Within a reasonable time after the order for relief in a case under this title, the United States trustee shall convene and preside at a meeting of creditors. The United States trustee may convene a meeting of any equity security holders. The court may not preside at, and may not attend, any meeting under this section including any final meeting of creditors.

Here's how the service rendered it in Spanish:

Reuniones de acreedores y de sostenedores de la seguridad de equidad. Dentro de un tiempo razonable después de la orden para la relevación en un caso bajo este título, el administrador de Estados Unidos convocará y presida en una reunión de acreedores. El administrador de Estados Unidos puede convocar una reunión de cualquier equidad sostenedores de la seguridad. La corte puede no presidir en, y puede no atender, cualquier reunión bajo esta sección incluyendo cualquier reunión de acreedores.

My Spanish isn't very good, but I think this translation would be enough to give me the basics. If you needed to know how to go about finding local counsel in a remote town in Spain, or to make air travel arrangements to Portugal—or from Portugal to here—in a hurry even imperfect translations could save you plenty of time and money.

Or, look at it from the opposite direction. Lexmark, for example, maintains a Spanish version of its corporate website. An introductory paragraph says that:

Lexmark es una empresa con operaciones a nivel mundial que desarrolla, fabrica y comercializa soluciones y productos de impresióón, incluyendo impresoras lááser, matriciales y de inyeccióón de tinta y los suministros correspondientes para los mercados del hogar y de oficina. Durante 1997, las ventas de impresoras y de suministros de consumo representaron cerca del 80 por ciento de los 2.500 millones de dóólares en ingresos de Lexmark.

Translator.go.com took about four seconds to translate this as:

Lexmark is a company with operations at worldwide level that develops, makes and commercializes solutions and products of printing, including laser printers, matrix and of office and red injection and the corresponding provisions for the markets of the home. During 1997, the sales of printers and provisions of consumption represented near the 80 percent of the 2,500 million dollars in income of Lexmark.

Not great prose in translation, but certainly intelligible.

Obviously, online translation is still in its infancy, and we're a long way from Start Trek's Universal Translator. But we're a lot closer than we were just a few years ago. The biggest remaining obstacle is the fact that even the most sophisticated automated system lacks the flexibility and common sense of a human translator. More and more, however, humans will use machines to do the heavy lifting of translation, intervening only to make the final product more idiomatic.

Mark Twain's short story " The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" was translated into French and Twain produced a scathing, hilarious re-translation back into English by translating it literally: "Eh bien! I no see not that that frog has nothing of better than another." Machine translation can produce similar results. I ran translator.go.com's Spanish translation of the Bankruptcy Code section above back through the translator and it responded with:

Meetings of creditors and sostenedores of the fairness security. Within a reasonable time after the order for the relevación in a case under this title, the administrator of the United States will summon and preside over in a meeting of creditors. The administrator of the United States can summon a meeting of any fairness sostenedores of the security. The cut can not preside over in, and can not take care of, any meeting under this section including any final meeting of creditors.

I suppose the gist of it is that the "cut" doesn't get involved until the "fairness sostenedores" have done their work.

Online translation services may be of the greatest benefit to two types of legal practice. The first and most obvious is the larger firm, with an international clientele. Lexington is, after all, the horse capital of the world, and local attorneys should be able to communicate with their counterparts wherever great horses are appreciated.

But Lexington also has a growing community of Hispanic and other ethnic groups for whom English is a second language, if it's spoken at all. There's little doubt many of their legal needs are unmet. Automated translation could be a way to begin to remedy that, allowing even the smallest practice to understand and address such needs without relying on a human translator at every step.

Do you have a website in English? You may not know it, but thanks to automatic translators on the Web you already have one in Spanish - and French, German, Portuguese and many other languages too.